They rebuilt the stage, but no one knows why.
The theatre had burned in places, cracked in others, its skeleton sighing beneath the strain of centuries of secrets. And yet, in the days that followed Marybeth's end, something unseen stitched it back together. Not perfectly. The curtains still bled thread. The rafters still whispered when no one watched. But the silence was gone.
People spoke again.
Names were remembered.
And the boy—whose name turned out to be Elias—smiled for the first time since I'd met him.
But nothing about Graywick stays whole.
Even in peace, something lingers.
---
I stayed a few more nights.
The innkeeper, now freed from her mute servitude, offered me a room with working lights and a bed that didn't sigh when you slept in it. Elias came by every morning with tea and silence—not the cursed kind, but the comforting one. The kind you share with someone who survived something unspeakable.
But even comfort has edges.
Every night, the theatre lights flickered.
Even with no power.
Every dawn, the stage curtains rustled, though no wind passed through.
And on the fourth morning, I found a note under my door.
> "THE DEVIL NEVER FORGETS HIS READERS."
Scrawled in crimson. Written backward.
---
I returned to the theatre.
Alone.
There was no music. No dolls. No boy.
Just the stage.
Empty.
Waiting.
I stepped onto it.
The floorboards held beneath me. No tricks. No traps. But something changed.
The lights turned on.
Soft. Warm. Familiar.
And across the theatre, in the audience, they sat.
Dozens of them.
All the people who had once been puppets.
Now free. Watching.
Waiting for the story.
And I understood.
They weren't haunting the theatre.
They were holding it together.
Because stories like Marybeth's don't die. They shift. They evolve. They pass from mouth to ear, from memory to mirror. And someone has to tell them.
Not to spread fear.
But to keep the truth alive.
---
I cleared my throat.
> "This is a story about a town that bit its tongue."
Elias appeared beside me. He carried the stitched doll.
It didn't speak. It only watched.
I continued.
> "About a woman who stitched silence into skin, and how that silence swallowed everything—until someone screamed loud enough to break the script."
The curtains behind us swayed.
Not in warning.
In applause.
And above the archway, the broken theater sign flickered.
It no longer read GRAYWICK.
It now read:
> THE DEVIL'S BEDTIME STORIES
---
That's the truth, isn't it?
Stories don't end when the villain dies.
They end when no one's left to remember them.
And this one?
It remembers you now.
So don't be surprised if you hear strings tightening in your sleep.
Or see your reflection blink a beat too late.
You read the script.
You turned the page.
And now, the curtains never close.
Because some stages live inside us forever.
Especially the ones we tried to forget.